Brain complexity: what it gives us (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, October 18, 2015, 14:08 (3324 days ago) @ David Turell

We don't see or hear reality directly, but what the brain gives us as it interprets reality from past and present patterns learned by the brain:-http://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2015/10/13/the-cosmos-inside-your-head-neuroscientist-david-eagleman-tells-the-story-of-the-brain-on-pbs/-"Some who watch will struggle with an inescapable conclusion: the “you” at the center of your personal universe is inseparable from the wetware in your head. There's nothing in the “world out there” that comes to us without interpretation by the brain. And the level of complexity involved in interpreting what we think of as the simplest matters, like distinguishing between colors and estimating distances, is difficult to grasp. In some cases, as Eagleman shows, what's in our head constitutes more of “reality” than what exists outside us.-"For example, we generally think of “seeing” as the result of processing information that comes through our eyes, but the truth is that several times more of what we “see” consists of information produced within the brain. All of us carry around internal models that the brain uses to construct, from endless perceptual fragments, what we call reality. In other words, much of what we experience of reality is, in Eagleman's words, a “beautifully rendered simulation.'”-Comment: As anyone who follows this website knows I take a directly pragmatic view of our secondhand position. It works.